ManicDDaily

Okay, I’ll stop.  No more writing about Robert Pattinson.  (For now anyway.)   Let’s turn to writing itself.  Writing and writer’s block.

First admission:  What I know about is getting something down on paper, or, if you prefer the computer screen.  So this post is not about writing for commercial success.  Though I’d like to know more about that, this is simply about writing.

Second admission:  I rarely personally suffer from writer’s block.  I suffer from writer’s foot-in-mouth disease, writer’s tinnitus (an ailment whose symptoms are manifest by a ringing in the reader’s ears), and increasingly both writer’s dementia (meaning that I write about crazy subjects like Robert Pattinson), and writer’s senility, meaning that I frequently simply mistype or live out words (like “live” instead of “leave”).

But I somehow avoid writer’s block.  I like to think that this is because of my lifelong attempt to follow the rules set down here.  I hope they will be useful to you too.

Before putting down a couple of these rules, I also want to give credit to Natalie Goldberg, author of  the wonderful Writing Down the Bones, who has been an inspiration for many years and founded many of these techniques (or versions of them).

Rule Number One:  Don’t Care.

Don’t care so much. Tell yourself from the start that your writing will be stupid, the story will be boring, the paper will be ridiculous.  Don’t even care if all you can write is, “I have nothing to say, I’m an idiot.”  So what?  There are many idiots in the world.   Don’t worry about it.  Just make yourself sit down and start.

If you’re having trouble not caring (and trouble starting), a pen and paper may be better helpmates than a computer.  There’s a flow of hand and pen which can produce a genuinely pleasant sensation, like swallowing a cool drink.  More importantly, most people have a fairly hard time reading their own handwriting (a definite assist on a first draft.)  The computer, in contrast, flashes extremely legible words back at you as you go.  It’s worse than a mirror; it can make you cringe before you even complete your image.

The computer can also be hard for the resistant because it allows for such easy escape.   Most composition books have no internet connection.

If you can’t write smoothly by hand, and you must write on the computer, and you get paralyzed there, then train your eyes to look away.   Stare into space, a wall.  Only check the screen often enough to make sure you haven’t gotten onto the wrong keys.  Frankly, even a few sentences of gobbledygook may be better than hours of paralysis.   (Remember this is only for those with writer’s block–if you don’t have it, look at the screen!)

If you are lucky enough to feel comfortable with pen in hand, go for one that can gather momentum—a roller, a fine-tipped felt, a fountain pen.   Cheap ballpoints can be as bad as rubber soles on concrete, sticking and tripping you up.

Once you get started, don’t stop to re-read until you reach a clear breaking point, perhaps set by a timer in advance.  Don’t cross out, don’t correct.  Don’t care.

(Not until the second draft anyway.)

Rule Number Two:  Care.

Care.  Think that your work is worth doing, think that you are worth the doing of it.

If you have an idea, care enough to stop whatever else you are doing and sit there with your pen and paper or your fingers and keyboard and write it down.  Care enough to write when you are walking, eating, on the train.  (Care enough to be impolite if you must.  Tell your kids to turn off the music or t.v.   Shut the door.)

If you don’t have an idea, care enough to turn off the t.v. yourself.  Remove yourself from the internet.  Care enough to stay at home on a beautiful day or even a work day or even a Saturday night if you are working or feel like you might.

If you’re stuck,  take a walk,  let your mind take a walk too.  Care enough to carry a composition book, even though you tell yourself you probably won’t need it, so that if an idea does come, you can write while you walk (being impolite if necessary).

Think:  if not now, when?  As I heard outside a garage in Greenwich Village one Saturday night:  “come on.  Life’s too short to enjoy it.”

To be continued.

PS:  Check out 1 Mississippi on Amazon, counting book with numbers, elephants and steamboats.  http://www.amazon.com/1-Mississippi-Karin-Gustafson/dp/0981992307/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248915782&sr=8-1